Research On The Effect Of Customer Experience On Customer Loyalty In Service Industries

The results of many researches indicate that customer loyalty has an important effect on the marketing performance of firms, and the intangibility, seperatability, variability and perishability characteristics of service determine that customer loyalty is more critical in service industries. So, totally understanding the forming mechanism of customer loyalty has important significance for service firms. Though lots of academic researches have been done and many theoretical models have been establised in this field, a lot of theoretical gaps exist to be filled.Many scholars point out that the essence of service is providing experience for customers. Researches of some scholars also indicate that service experience is the most important factor that affects customer loyalty. So, understanding the relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty has important theoretical significance and realistic significance. But there are many limitations in this field.Customer experience in service industries is the customer's psychological feeling evoked by the marketing activities of service firms. In the literature, the researches on customer experience mostly are limited to the experience brought by service itself. But there are many kinds of marketing activities which service firms can use to win customer loyalty. Customer experience in service industries can be devided into three categories which include communication experience brought to customers by the marketing communication activities of service firms, service experience brought to customers by service firms in the process of customer's service consumption and relationship experience brought to customers by the relationship efforts of service firms. The experiences can all affect customers. Only researching on the effect of service experience on customer loyalty obviously has limitations. Though some scholars have studied the relationship between communication experience, relationship experience and customer loyalty from different perspectives, the quantity of these studies is too few, some results of these studies are contradictory to some degree and some of these studies are just theoretical illustration. Though the theoretical views of these studies are influential, empirical supports are lacked. In the aspect concerning the marketing theory of customer experience, many scholars emphasize the importance of total customer experience. Some scholars point out that total customer experience has a great attraction for customers and the interaction between or among different categories of customer experience has an positive role in the process of creating customer loyalty. Though the theory about total customer experience has been approved by many scholars, empirical study is lacked so far. In the existing literarture, the empirical research of Nguyen and Leblanc(2002) indicates that the experiences brought to customers by service employees and service physical evidence, and the interaction between these two kinds of experience affect corporate image positively. This result supports the total customer experience theory to some degree, but in this research, the experiences brought to custmers by service employees and service physical evidence are all belong to the scope of service experience. The research on the role of the interactions between or among communication experience, service experience and relationship experience in the process of creating customer loyalty is lacked. Obviously, filling these theoretical gaps can deepens and broadens the theory of customer loyalty and customer experience. Based on this theoretical background, this dissertation researches on the mechanism of the effect of customer experience on customer loyalty in service industries, constructs mechanism model of the effect of customer experience in service industries on customer loyalty based on the literature research and proposes corresponding theoretical hypotheses that communication experience, service experience and relationship experience which brought to custmers by service firms affect customer loyalty positively through emotion path and image path, and the interactions between or among different categories of customer experience play a positive role in the process of creating customer loyalty.To empirically test these theoretical hypotheses, this dissertation firstly chooses fast food industry as research scope, and identifies or develops primary scales of corresponding constructs in this research based on literature research, then tests the reliability and validity of these scales. The questionnaire of formal survey is formed finally after adjustment. In the process of formal survey, 442 effective questionnaires have been acquired from 500 questionnaires. This dissertation empirically tests the theoretical hypotheses using structural equation modeling and regression analysis. The results of the test using structural equation modeling indicate that eight hypotheses about three categories of customer experience affecting customer loyalty through emotion path and image path are all supported. The results of regression analysis indicate that three of eight hypotheses about the interactions between or among communication experience, service experience and relationship experience have positive influence on customer emotion and brand image are supported.According to the analysis of the results, this dissertation gives some conclusions.Firstly, communication experience, service experience and relationship experience can all positively affect customer loyalty through customer emotion and brand image. Customer experience is an important driving factor of customer loyalty. Secondly, the influencing powers of communication experience, service experience and relationship experience in the process of creating customer loyalty are different. Service experience is the critical factor. This is due to that service experience can creat greater influence on customer emotion and brand image than communication experience or relationship experience, improving communication experience or relationship experience has less influence on customer emotion and brand image when service experience is bad, in the interactions between communication experience and service experience, relationship experience and service experience, service experience is the core of three categories of customer experience.Thirdly, customer emotion and brand image are mediating variablies between customer experience and customer loyalty. In this study, emotion path and image path between customer experience and customer loyalty have been empirically supported. So, customer experience affects customer loyalty through customer emotion and brand iamge. Sensal factors can also affect customer loyalty like reational factors.Finally, the interaction between communication experience and service experience, the interaction between relationship experience and service experience and the interaction among communication experience, service experience and relationship experience can affect customer loyalty through customer emotion. So, interactions of customer experience play a positive role in the process of creating customer loyalty. The theoretical contributions of this study are as follows.Firstly, this study constructs the mechanism model of the effect of customer experience on customer loyalty based on literature research, proposes and empirically tests the emotion path and image path between customer experience and customer loyalty. This research deepens the customer experience theory.Secondly, according to the results of this study, the interactions between communication experience and service experience, between relationship experience and relationship experience can affect customer loyalty through customer emotion. This result supports the theoretical views of Schmitt (1999) and Pine & Gilmore (1999) to some degree.Thirdly, in the existing research about customer loyalty in service industries, the influencing factors of customer loyalty are service quality, service value an customer satisfaction which are based on customer's rational decision. The results of this study, however, indicate that customer experience positively affects customer loyalty through sensal factors. So, this study supports the view that sensal factors can also be the important variables which affect customer loyalty.Fourthly, in the exsiting literature, the research about the relationship between different categories of customer experience is lacked. According to the analysis of the results of this study, this dissertation proposes the view that service experience is the critical factor among three categories of customer experience.Finally, in the existing literature, different ideas exist about whether communication experience play positive role in the process of creating customer loyalty. The result of this study indicates that the communication experience brought to customers by the marketing activities can positively affect customer loyalty significantly through sensal factors. This supports the results of Mela et al (1997) and Braun (1999).Though this study has some theoretical contributions to literature, some limitations exist inevitably due to my limited research capacity and research condition. The limitations include that the effect of other variables, such as service value and servie equity, which can also affects customer loyalty in the model constructed in this study is not concerned, customer emotion is treated only as positive emotion , scales used in this study are needed to improve in some aspects, whether the model is adaptable in other service industries is not tested, etc. The suggested research directions are as following.Firstly, the relationship between the model proposed in this study and variables, such as service value or customer satisfaction, can be discussed.Secondly, test the adaptation of this model to other service industries.Thirdly, longitudinal study is significant for the research of customer experience.Fourthly, further research should be done about the relationship of communication experience, service experience and relationship experience.Finally, the effect of customer experience on different dimensions of customer loyalty should be researched in the future.